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Saturday, October 8, 2016

In the immediate aftermath of the revelation of a tape
showing Donald Trump expressing a demeaning, misogynistic and ultimately
controlling view of women, many pundits noted that what he said was not “locker
room talk,” stating that Trump’s disgusting ramble was far worse, and perhaps,
too, that “locker room” talk was okay.

Let’s consider “locker room” talk as a gray area of male
(and) female human behavior. Most of it tends to be aspirational—a discussion
of things one would like to do or plan on doing. “Locker room” talk does
involve a certain amount of objectification of women (of men when women do it),
but it’s fairly harmless as long as it is not spoken to the individual being
objectified and does not play out in sexist behaviors in which one person treats
another as a mere object.And some talk is
always off limits—as with racism, anything outwardly misogynistic belongs
nowhere, not in the locker room, not in the tavern, not in man cave in front of
a widescreen TV. For example, discussing the use of a rape drug.That’s no longer “locker room talk.” It’s
different and it’s disgusting.

And the overwhelming number of Americans—from radical
feminists to conservative Christians who feel a woman’s place is in the
home—knew immediately that what Trump said was and is different from jockish
banter—and is completely disgusting.

It is nevertheless instructive to take a look at the various
parts of what Trump said, beginning with context. We aren’t talking about a few
buds downing suds in a bar at which single men and women gather. Trump was on
the job.

Secondly, the audience was not Trump’s best bro, but a
business acquaintance, a television and radio host, which means he is part of
the media.This tape marks the first
known instance of a public figure crudely discussing the unsolicited groping of
female parts with the news media.

Now we come to the implications of what Trumpty-Dumpty
actually said.It was despicable, a manifestation
that he views women as objects he uses as he wants, for his sexual pleasure or
to demonstrate his high status.

The comments reek with abuse and revel in the lack of
consent they flaunt. Morality aside, if he had said he slept with a woman and
she was married, it would have been okay from the legal standpoint because we
assume consent. No one knows what goes on in a marriage—is it open?, was she an
abused wife?—so most people will not pass judgment a priori on a man sleeping
with a married woman, even while thinking the guy indiscrete to a fault to
break the confidence and tell someone else. But what Trump said was that he
kept pestering her, bothering her, cornering her. That’s always creepy, always
wrong, and pretty much always illegal.

Same thing goes for his statements about groping the
genitals of women without receiving prior permission to do so because he was a
star. If he had said that stars get to sleep with a lot of women or a lot of
women like to sleep with stars, some of us might be offended by the loose
sexual mores involved, but again, there was nothing illegal because the women
consented. It is the groping of a woman’s genitals without prior permission
that revolts us and convinces us that Trump is a vile woman-hater.

Interestingly enough, the language is fairly mild, if
revealing of Trump’s attitudes. Trump never uses the “c” word. Of course, “screwing,”
“sleeping with,” “going to bed with,” “making love with” (or in Trump’s case
“to”), “getting it on with”—there are numerous less offensive ways to express
sexual union than “fuck.” But Trump is talking about something he—the
all-powerful Donald—did to someone else—some good-looking bimbo—and what he did
or wanted to do was simple brutal, one-way “fucking.” But in the casual listen without analysis, we
hear “fuck” so much now in so many different contexts that it ceases to shock.
After all how many people got fucked in Trump’s many bankruptcies?

And what about the guy, the mediocre Billy Bush? He seems to
be going along with the flow of the conversation. Believe me, if someone said
to me that stars get to grope women’s private parts, I would have said, “No
they don’t, and why would they want to? A lot of women will willingly let a
star touch them anywhere. All he has to do is ask nicely. So only a sick person
would grope.” Bush lost his moral compass by not acknowledging what everyone
instantly recognized: Trumpty-Dumpty went over the line.

The apology was unacceptable. The tone was grudging, almost
defiant, which lent a hollow ring to the words. He said the statements he was
caught making on tape were “not what I am,” but did not apologize for the many
other misogynistic statements he has made about Megan Kelly, Carly Fiorina,
Rosie O’Donnell, Alicia Machado, Hillary Clinton and other women in only the
past few months.He also limited his
apologies to the comments, and said nothing about the actions that the comments
indicated he had committed. He implied without stating it is that all he did
was talk about it, that he didn’t really harass the married woman or slide his
hand up some young lady’s skirt uninvited. Even if we give him the benefit of
the doubt, which I don’t, what kind of a blow-hard is proud of sexually assaulting
women?

He made this very limited, very stiff apology worse by what
he said next. Turning the subject from the apology to the election issues was
in extremely poor taste, and then to go after Bill Clinton for his affairs
negated any positive intent or outcome from his contrition.

But that’s not what people want to hear in an apology. They
want to hear, “I’m bad and I’m sorry about it. Here is what I’m going to do to
fix it.” They don’t want you talk about the other person’s transgressions, just
to deal with your own.

Trump mentioned no plan of rehabilitation. He is not
enlisting in a sensitivity training course. He is not contributing a few
million to fund public education programs that train men and women not to
condone rape and domestic violence. He has not agreed to become a spokesperson
or speak at events about what a reformed sinner looks like.

No, Trump thinks that a simple “I’m sorry” will suffice to
be forgiven and get the votes of American women and men.

But
it won’t work. There was too much offensive about the comments and too much
offensive about the apology.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

The CNN poll immediately following the debate between vice
presidential candidates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence revealed how the news media’s
insistence on covering personalities has distorted the electorate, or at least
those who watched the debate. Viewers
rated Kaine ahead on knowledge of the issues and helpfulness to his running
mate, but rated Pence ahead on likeability. And who did the viewers say won the
overall debate? Pence.

I agree that Pence was more likeable than Kaine that evening,
who has too much of a Teddy bear face to be a credible attack dog. But what
wasn’t likeable were Pence’s views or his tendency to duck tough questions
about his running mate. Pence frequently denied that Trumpty-Dumpty had said
things that all the journalists and much of the country have seen or heard him
say. When asked about other aspects of the Trump program, Pence refused to
answer the question. Regarding Russia, he essentially threw the Donald under
the bus. It was a YUGE bus.

The viewers saw Pence’s prevarications and then relived them
when journalists and pundits described Pence’s treatment of his running mate. That’s
one reason that it wasn’t a landslide for Pence, or even a clear victory. The
results were close on all questions in the CNN poll. The dominant narrative in the
mainstream media was that Pence won the VP debate, but that he won it for
himself, not for the top of his ticket. But
it was close. Almost as many non-surrogate journalists and pundits preferred
Kaine as proclaimed Pence the winner. In
short, Pence eked out a narrow victory over Kaine.

Likeability matters, especially for Republicans. Eisenhower,
Reagan and Bush II were all elected because of their likeability, and Bush I
won because he made his opponent so dislikeable. Note that outside of the military, Eisenhower
didn’t know much, and both Reagan and Bush II knew very little, but that didn’t
stop them because they were so darn nice and friendly.

Which brings us to the matter of facial grimaces, an affect
that often mars one’s appearance or makes one’s demeanor less appealing. Pence
reacted frequently to Kaine’s statements with a grimace or a smirk or sometimes
a smirky grimace. No one seems to have noticed it the way they did Trump’s
whimpers of a whipped bully in the first debate between the presidential candidates.
No pundit discussed Pence’s facial distortions as a negative characteristic.

Yet if you watch tapes of the 2000 presidential debate, you
see Al Gore make virtually the same facial expressions. Virtually all
commenters said that Gore’s sighs and smirks were off-putting. The polls and
pundits agreed that George W. Bush won that debate, even though he had trouble
mouthing his basic messages and Gore displayed a scope of knowledge that was
truly extraordinary. The journalists, led by Maureen Dowd, called Gore
supercilious and smug, whereas Bush came off as a cool dude with whom it would
be great to down a few. Gore’s facial expressions became part of the broader
narrative of the election. The cool guy versus the awkward wonk.

When I compare old videos of Gore to Pence’s performance
against Kaine, I can see little difference between the facial expressions. The
same mild exasperation. The same demeaning half smile. The only difference I
see is the context: Gore was scoffing at the whoppers and misinformation that
Georgie was spouting, whereas Pence was scoffing at Kaine’s truthful
statements. Are we to conclude that it’s all right to smirk at comments in a
debate, as long as you are smirking at the truth? Can facial expressions only
undercut the truth and not be used when someone is lying or portraying obvious
ignorance?

Here is where the interplay of the mass media and the public
becomes complicated. Both the media and the viewers thought Bush and Pence won
their respective debates. Statistically valid surveys both times suggested
viewers preferred the Republicans even before they experienced the onslaught of
hyperventilated media nonsense.

Remember, though, that virtually every viewer has undergone
indoctrination by the news media from their first moments of consciousness. The
mainstream news media always has a bias to support Republicans, and has tended
to skew right on many social issues and most economic and foreign policy issues
except during the later stages of the Vietnam War. More significantly, the mainstream news media
pushes celebrity culture to the forefront and has gradually infected election
coverage with celebrity issues: personalities, insults, personal animuses, who
said what to whom, lifestyles, personal scandals, verbal or physical faux pas
and, front and center, likeability. The media tells us time and time again to
value likeability above substance. Think of the pejorative nature of the
language used to describe issues-oriented candidates: wonks, nerds.

Likeability or the lack thereof has become one of the major
issues of the campaign. The news media has created one of the greatest false
comparisons in the history of human rhetoric: the likeability levels of Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump. All the polls show both candidates at historically
low levels of likeability for presidential candidates. Substantial numbers of
voters for both candidates say they are holding their noses and voting against
the other candidate.

So where’s the false comparison? It has to do with the
reasons for Hillary’s lack of likeability: they are all false. When she was
Secretary of State, she was perhaps the most well-liked person in the country,
and certainly in the world. She was well-liked as a Senator. What changed the
perceptions of many Americans was the constant barrage in the mass media of
phony and trumped-up scandals like Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation and her
emails, and the constant harping of Republicans depicting her as a she-devil of
deception and corruption. Maureen Dowd and other pundits who prefer personality
profiles to issues analysis fed a false description of Hillary as cold,
distant, vindictive and uncaring. Pundits would say these things and write them,
but like the so-called scandals in her emails and the foundation, no one could
ever give an example. In many cases, Hillary was blamed for things that her
peers also did, even after she admitted a mistake and others did not. Sexism
entered into the equation, too, as society tends to find fault in women for
traits such as aggressiveness and tenaciousness that they find admirable in
men.

Thus, as far as likeability goes, the race is between
someone who is truly despicable and someone who the media has depicted as
unlikeable.

The 2000 election shows the negative ramifications of voting
on likeability, and some, including this writer, would say the 1980 election
demonstrated it as well. The country
would be on safer ground if we forget about likeability and judged the candidates on some real criteria, such as stand on
issues, details in programs, knowledge of the facts, past experience, honesty
of statements and vision for the future.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Contemplating a day in the life of the current American
presidential campaign is enough to make a sane person want to blow “his mind
out in a car.” You know, the race between a “lucky man who [never] made the
grade” and an experienced, intelligent woman with enough great ideas to fill
all the “holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.”

All references to the Beatles aside, the most recent 24 hour
slice of insanity is a reminder that we all should refrain from using the
expression “a new low” until after November 8th.

Let’s start with Donald Trump who after he “dragged a comb
across” his head, made the completely unsubstantiated accusation that Hillary
Clinton has fooled around on President Bill. First of all, there is absolutely
no proof, not a shred of evidence, not a soupcon of rumor that Hillary has ever
been anything but a completely faithful wife to her husband. Beyond that is the
deeper question of why it should matter. And why should it? We know that
Presidents F. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, G.W. Bush and Clinton all had
affairs, and that Trump himself had affairs during both his first two
marriages. Why is it anyone’s business? How does it make a candidate less fit
for office?

Perhaps the answer came from Rudy Guiliani, who on the very
same day that Trumpty-Dumpty tried to paint an A on Hillary’s forehead stated
explicitly that being a woman was a flaw for a president. His exact words: “Don't you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better
for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she's ever produced is a
lot of work for the FBI checking out her emails.”Note
that Rudy, another man who cavorted publicly with a woman other than his wife,
did not say “a woman who did such and such.” No, he stopped the complete
thought expressed in an independent clause with the word “woman.” His
statement, when parsed of its grammatical excrescences, reduces to “Don’t you
think a man is a lot better for the United States than a woman.” It was so
shocking an example of the misogyny animating much of the Trump campaign and
the GOP agenda that, “Well, I just had to laugh.”

But wait, it gets worse. I thought “I went into a dream”
because Donald Trump could not have possibly have said to a group of veterans
that soldiers and vets suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are
themselves to blame for a lack of character.
But it wasn’t a dream. Humpty-Dumpty’s exact words: “When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come
back from war and combat — and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in
this room have seen many times over and you’re strong and you can handle it,
but a lot of people can’t handle it,” Most commentators have
focused on his heartless statement that “a lot of people can’t handle it.” Perhaps what’s worse is his clueless
patronizing of his audience by assuming that all of them can “handle it.”
Statistically speaking, the only way to make sure that a room full of vets
contain no one suffering from PSTD is to set that as the criteria for entry.
And even then, I’m certain that a sufferer would slip in because so many
veterans find it hard to admit they need help for the nightmares, rage,
depression and behavior disorders plaguing them. It was another instance of
Trump talking to one group of people about “those other people” not like us. He
paints an insulting and overly dire picture of the current status of
African-Americans and claims a nonexistent threat of terrorism posed by
immigrants in front of lily white groups. But this time it backfired. At a
gathering of veterans, he almost assuredly insulted and shamed many of those
present and made that “crowd of people turn away.”

Finally was the news that the New York State attorney general issued an
order preventing the Trump Foundation from soliciting funds in the state, the
latest shoe to drop in the continuing scandal of a foundation that has done
little but illegally use OPM (other people’s money) to solve Trump’s legal
problems or buy him expensive geegaws.

Another major Trump scandal—his taking a tax write-off of
nearly a billion dollars in 1995—continued to play out, with Trump surrogates
claiming that the fact he lost all that money and then used it against future
earnings was sheer genius. None point out that Trump’s high living on the
corporate nickel contributed to the great losses declared not only by him, but
by the many vendors and investors who took a bath in his major bankruptcies. At
least Hillary has the savvy to know, and point out, that Trump’s losses came
primarily in an industry—gambling—which at the time was minting money for
everyone else.

The most absurd moment of this decidedly looking-glass day
was when Neil Cavuto, a Fox News business guru and anchor needed an expert to
help him discuss the significance of Trump’s tax losses. Unable to find a
reputable economist or tax expert willing to praise Trump for his genius, Neil
engaged in batting Trump messages back and forth with a has-been, never-was
actor with no business or academic creds named Scott Baio.

As a left-winger and ardent Hillary supporter, I should be
overjoyed that the Trump campaign has perfected the knack of digging itself
into a hole about four thousand times larger than Albert Hall.

But then….

I read the news today.

Oy Veh.

The mainstream news media continue to try to shore up
Trump’s campaign in many subtle ways. Take National Public Radio, which first
interviewed an ardent Trump supporter and then interviewed a reluctant Clinton
supporter. In other words, NPR chose to highlight the false narrative about the
two campaigns that the mainstream news media created months ago out of pure
phlogiston. There is plenty of enthusiasm about Hillary out there—about her
programs, about her experience, and most certainly about the fact that she is
the first woman major party nominee. Her party’s leaders are unified as
virtually never before. Money is pouring in from small and large donors. Her
rallies are as boisterous as Trump’s, although far from as rowdy. But the news media ignores all the evidence
of Hillary-mania in favor of a false narrative that because it has been
repeated so often has become the central story of her campaign.

Meanwhile, the New
York Times, whose editorials claim to deplore the deplorable
Trumpty-Dumpty, continue to provide subtle support to him in the news pages. Once
again, Trump stories dominated: Five stories about the Donald and only one
about Hillary. While it’s true that several of the stories were negative, the Times still managed to help him in three
ways:

1.It dedicated an entire story to Trump’s vow to
bolster U.S. cybersecurity defenses, mostly his typical bloviating about the
problem and he will solve it, without going into many details, unless you
consider creating a task force and asking for recommendations a plan. This
article says nothing about Hillary’s plans, but it does mention Trump’s painful
comments about PTSD sufferers deep into the story where almost no one would see
it. Why didn’t the comments get the
headline or their own story?

2.The headline of the one Hillary story focuses on
her reaction to the release of three pages from Trump’s 1995 tax returns. This one Hillary story could have just as
easily featured her renewed call yesterday to foster greater economic equality
by raising the minimum wage, bolstering labor unions and offering tax
incentives to companies that share profits with employees. The headline could
also have touted Hillary’s most recent endorser, LeBron James. But instead of
presenting a candidate with views and plans, the Times turned Hillary into another bit player commenting on the
foibles of the tragically comic white male protagonist, Donald Trump.

3.The Times
front page story analyzing how detrimental to the economy it would be to
unravel the North American Free Trade Agreement references Trump’s opinions on
the issue and not Hillary’s. Anyone paying attention already knows that Hillary
knows everything there is to know about NAFTA and its impact and Trump is badly
misinformed except when he’s telling pants-on-fire lies. President Obama’s
views are also noted in the article, so in a real sense, the Times is equating Trump with Obama. It
couldn’t be because they are both presidential, because Trump’s not. Nor is Donald
the leader of his party. That’s Paul Ryan. Maybe it’s because both Trump and
our President are men? Subtle sexism or
conflation of Trump with Obama?—whatever the reason, the result raises
Trumpty-Dumpty’s prestige and lowers Hillary’s.

I wish I could say it was a dream or
“I saw a film today,” but it’s the reality of the 2016 election campaign.

No wonder that, like more and more people, I find myself
staring wide-eyed at the television, radio, newspaper, tablet or monitor and
screaming “I’d love to turn you off.”

Monday, October 3, 2016

David Brooks, who frequently combines bad sociology with his
yearning for a fantasy past that never existed, is the latest to play the
conflation game to describe the political election, declaring that both the
Clinton and Trump campaigns suffer from a lack of vision.

Brooks sees a corrupted campaign on both sides, steered by
materialist concerns and far from the idealism of either the 1960s, represented
by Hillary, or the 1980s, represented by the Donald. His first mistake is to
consider the 1980s politics of selfishness as an expression of idealism, when
in fact it was a base gambit to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the
middle class, the upper middle class and the poor to the wealthy masquerading
as a set of conservative ideas and (non-existent) economic laws.

In his article titled “The
Death of Idealism,” Brooks says that both races display a lack of a
“poetic, aspirational quality.” Here is his extended peroration against both
the Trumpty-Dumpty and Clinton campaigns:

“There is no
uplift in this race. There is an entire absence, in both campaigns, of any
effort to appeal to the higher angels of our nature. There is an assumption, in
both campaigns, that we are self-seeking creatures, rather than also loving,
serving, hoping, dreaming, cooperating creatures. There is a presumption in
both candidates that the lowest motivations are the most real.”

What a load of week-old fish guts.

To be sure, the Trump campaign is based on the politics of
selfishness in its most extreme form, animated by an anger that is not directed
at social ills, but at the loss of a special status.

But to say the same about the Clinton campaign is not just a
conflation, but an out-and-out distortion.

Brooks presents as his proof that Hillary and her campaign
lack idealism the fact that when asked “why she wants to be president or for
any positive vision,” she responds by listing the programs she supports.

What Brooks doesn’t say is that behind each and every one of
her programs—I should say the programs of a united Democratic party—is a
shining vision of true equality of opportunity and an equitable distribution of
wealth that enables all people to have adequate education, healthcare, access
to higher education and retirement. Keep in mind that the Clintons are rich,
the Obamas are rich, the Warrens are rich, the Bidens are rich, the Sanders are
very well off. And yet these leaders and many others in the Democratic Party
have produced the most left-wing (I hate using the word “progressive” since the
historical Progressives were such racists!) political platform in history. These
rich people want to raise taxes on themselves and their big donors—How is that
not idealism? The Democrats could have moved much further right and still been
far to the left of the current Republican Party. But unlike a large number of
people who escaped their middle class backgrounds and became rich over the past
three decades, or became richer than they were before as in the case of
Trumpty-Dumpty, these Democratic leaders have a vision of a better world, not
just for the lucky and those who have already made it, but for everyone.

What was it, if not idealism, that animated the uplifting
and emotional Democratic convention? Speaker after speaker appealed to our
better nature, our responsibility to our community, and a higher mission than
naked self-interest.

In every speech I have heard Hillary give during the
campaign, she focuses on her longtime mission to help women, children and
families. If her consistent and persistent actions and statements advocating
the rights, safety, future and health of women and children don’t constitute
idealism, I don’t know what does.

Then there’s the not insignificant matter of nominating and
potentially electing our first woman president. All the women and many of the
men I know are psyched. The gradual and sometimes bloody granting of economic
and political freedoms to more and more people is a cornerstone of traditional
American idealism. To many, electing a
woman president will fulfill a dream that goes back to the original
Suffragettes. But to many others, the dream goes back even further, because
they connect the long hard struggle of women to achieve equality with that of
African-Americans and other minorities.

In other words, by its very nature, the Clinton campaign
can’t help but be idealistic and uplifting to all real Americans, even those
who don’t agree with her policies.

I’m not sure what bothers Brooks about the Clinton campaign,
but I suspect he doesn’t like its progressive principles and has therefore
tried to tar it with the false accusation of being materialistic and lacking
vision. It probably bothers Brooks that there is very little about a deity or
traditional religion in the Clinton/Democratic program, since Brooks is always
invoking a higher spirituality. Maybe Brooks wants to keep his taxes low. And
we can’t discount the possibility that Brooks just isn’t ready for a woman
president.

Brooks ends his
piece with “At some point
there will have to be a new vocabulary and a restored anthropology, emphasizing
love, friendship, faithfulness, solidarity and neighborliness that pushes
people toward connection rather than distrust.” Earth to Brooks: your dream of a politics
of connection exists already. It’s the central force behind Hillary Clinton,
Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

If it weren’t for the entertainment value, I’d be pleased that Texas Governor Rick Perry is foundering in the Republican presidential race. After all, Governor Perry, who is in an unprecedented fourth term as chief executive of the nation's second-largest state, still might get the Republican nomination for president. If that happens there’s no telling what the voters might be fooled into doing. Just look at how far George W. Bush got.